Second favorite bit of teaching technology next to paper and pencil.
Marianas Variety
by Naomi Vazquez
THE Microsoft HoloLens is one of the pieces of technology brought to Saipan by Open Reef Innovations instructor Sean Wybrant, the 2017 Colorado State Teacher of The Year.
Wybrant said of all the equipment he brought to the island, the HoloLens is his favorite.
Using augmented reality technology, the HoloLens allows users to develop, observe and interact with computer generated experiences within a real space as holograms. The HoloLens is the first of its kind as AR glasses and is controlled using voice and hand gestures.
“My absolute favorite piece of technology is a pencil and paper –– something where you can just write and put your ideas out there,” Wybrant said. “But what is most exciting about the HoloLens is it allows you to do just that, but on the world around you in real time.”
Wybrant and his students in Colorado are working on a game to teach about light on the HoloLens. There will be a virtual laser emitter on the ceiling that will shoot out a virtual laser. The user will then use virtual mirrors to bounce the light into a virtual end point, bouncing the light around real objects in the room during the process.
“But we didn’t start there,” Wybrant said. “We started by making a virtual, holographic cube and having it float in front of you, then we learned how to make it spin, and we just built up to where we are now.”
One of the best qualities to the HoloLens is its ability to produce various types of experiences, which is particularly exciting from an educational perspective, Wybrant said.
He said, in one instant, students could put a black hole simulation in the middle of their classroom and in the next instant, replace the black hole with a dinosaur fossil excavation experience. Students could learn about the effects of a tsunami and then study 3-D anatomy a second later, he said.
Wybrant also said a previous student of his figured out how to create a holographic periodic table on the HoloLens that’s interactive and auto-formats itself based on new discoveries. The student now has an internship with Lockheed Martin, a global security and aerospace company.
“The possibilities with this technology are virtually limitless,” Wybrant said.
He said AR technology has a lot of potential in the CNMI in the industries of tourism, engineering and education, among others. The HoloLens has the potential to do things from scanning restaurant signs and providing information about the restaurant to holographically identifying where WWII underwater wreckage lies.
“You could look at shipping routes, coral reefs…there’s all kinds of possibilities,” he said.
In the future, Wybrant’s students in Colorado will use scans of the World War II wreckage from Saipan, done by East Carolina University, and coral reef scans, done by the Smithsonian partially on Saipan, to create AR experiences that teach about the war and reef sustainability. He said he’d like to see his students in Colorado create tutorials to teach Saipan students how to create their own AR experiences, if students on Saipan are interested.
“What I’d really like to see is what happens when you give a piece of technology like this to kids on the island,” Wybrant said. “Kids don’t have barriers…when you give technology like this to kids, they’ll create the future they want.”
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